Pop Culture: When the song doesn’t remain the same

Saturday

Jul 20, 2013 at 12:00 PM

According to CNN Money, some long-familiar automobile features are either gone or soon to go the way of the dinosaur.

According to CNN Money, some long-familiar automobile features are either gone or soon to go the way of the dinosaur.Keys, antennas, crank windows and manual transmissions are no longer part of the new-car world, and will soon fade into memory or find a home on the collectors’ circuit. For some reason, I was bummed out after reading it. A parallel feeling struck me a few days later as I listened to Pandora. At one point, the station landed on a song by The Dead Milkmen.If you don’t recall, never knew or are too young to have forgotten, The Dead Milkmen were a satirical punk band (the group reunited in 2011) ..... that achieved a minor MTV splash in 1988 with “Punk Rock Girl.” It was a fun ditty about a punk rock girl, back when making fun of pseudo-punkers was actually amusing (and to some degree “effective.”)(The Milkmen also named an album “Metaphysical Graffiti,” my third-favorite sendup of Led Zeppelin behind the reggae “tribute” band Dread Zeppelin and the B-Surfers album title “Hairway to Steven.”)Remembering how amusing “Punk Rock Girl” was in its era, as I listened with today’s ears, I realized some of the specific humor is probably lost outside its initial cultural context. I imagined a failed attempt to explain the appeal to someone who never heard the music and didn’t live in that time it was produced.Then I realized something else: Even the band’s name is “jokey” only in an earlier era. Although no youthful person today would have difficulty with the concept of a milkman, the actual existence of such a thing as a common career choice means that any joke connected with it would have little meaning today. So there you have it: The Dead Milkmen are the window-cranks of ‘80s music.An unrelated note (seemingly related only by accident): I’m putting Pop Culture on hiatus for a while (although you still may see it on occasion, new or “classic.”) Some other work essentials have to take precedence in the short term. Plus after about 15 years of writing this column, it may be a good time to retool and fine-tune the series.

Dennis Volkert is features editor at the Sturgis Journal. Contact him at dvolkert@sturgisjournal.com.